


cupid saw it fit

by gravityinglass



Series: til death do us part [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal, marriage pact, wedding fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 16:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6202270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Marry me,” Calum said, and Michael choked.</p><p>“Dude, at least take me on a date first.”</p><p>--</p><p>Michael and Calum are both single and unmarried at thirty. Calum brings up a marriage pact from when they were fifteen, and Michael says yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cupid saw it fit

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of a series of fics I'm writing/planning to write, all about Malum and weddings.  
> It's a placeholder fill for the 5sosremixfic (until I can actually finish the fic I'm 50% done with for the fill...only three months late) and it's the first in a series of at least five fics focusing on Malum getting married. And if you're really lucky, the series might include wedding adjacent activities. Like...honeymoons, maybe? :D

_i must have passed you by a hundred times before cupid saw it fit to let me dance with you. footloose, fancy free, pretty lady won’t you dance with me; cause one look from your eyes and i knew that it was right this time. - lost boy, relient k_  

* * *

 

“Marry me,” Calum said, and Michael choked.

“Dude, at least take me on a date first.”

Calum rolled his eyes. Across the room, Samantha tried to teach Kotira how to properly stack blocks. Kotira merely squealed and toppled the pile, causing Samantha to sigh as deeply as a four year old could manage.

“Remember when we were fifteen?” he asked Michael, not bothering to get up and wrangle his daughter--or Michael’s, for that matter.

“What, before anything exciting ever happened to us? Ow! Why’d you pinch me?”

“And when we were nineteen?”

“Kind of hard to forget. Why, what’s your point?”

“And twenty-three?”

“Calum, a point? I’m sure you’ve got one somewhere.”

“Remember when we signed that marriage pact?”

Michael stilled. “Oh.”

Kotira babbled at Sam. Her vocabulary was still pretty limited, but what she did have she used actively. Calum had tried to teach her basic Maori, but his own Maori was rusty, and so his mangled words became her mangled words, and then blended into her messy toddler English. Sam had a better grasp on language, being two years older, and she had taken it upon herself to teach Kotira the biggest words she knew.

Calum snorted at their girls trying to communicate; they seemed to mostly understand each other, most of the time. He still wasn’t sure Sam didn’t realize Kotira wasn’t just a really lifelike doll, though.

“Thirty’s coming up fast,” he said, instead of crossing the room to play with the girls. “And--we almost got married when we were nineteen.”

“Yeah, and that was when we figured out we really didn’t do well when we dated each other,” Michael reminded him. “And I actually got married when we were twenty-three.”

“And look how that turned out.” Calum winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean--”

“My husband _died_ after four years of wedded bliss, Cal. You can say it, you know.”

“Still. I mean, now--we’re both single, we’re almost thirty. Why not get married, Mike?”

“The fact that we really didn’t work out when we were nineteen?”

“We were nineteen! Things have changed since then. Like. A lot. You let me and Kotira crash with you guys, for starters, which. Thanks for that, again.”

“My house was already baby-proofed. Yours wasn’t.” Michael shrugged. “And Kotira’s one of my favorite humans, you know that.”

“Oh, and I’m not?”

Michael’s expression turned serious. “You _know_ you are, don’t even joke about that.”

“So, why don’t we get married, then?”

“Cal…”

“I mean it! We’ve both got daughters, who, after being the only kids on tour for almost a year, act like sisters. And we’re both single, and I don’t know about you, but I trust you more than anyone else. I think...I think we should at least consider it.”

“What, a pact we made when we were fifteen? Fuck, Cal. We were worlds away from who we are now. It’s not a legally binding contract, and...we never worked well as lovers. You know that, you have to remember that. I know you know that.”

“But we’re pretty great as partners, and we could raise our girls together.”

“We already do.”

“Yeah, but it’d mean the girls would have one more guardian when we have to be on the road. One more person we trust if Sam broke her arm again, or if Kotira needed someone to hold her after a nightmare. Let them be sisters. Fuck, let them have two parents under one roof. The lovers bit? We’ll figure that out, yeah?”

Michael scrubbed his hands down his face. “Let me think about it?”

“Take your time.”

\--

Calum wasn’t anywhere near subtle. Three manila envelopes found their way onto the kitchen table and stayed there. The first was a marriage application, filled out in neat blue ink. The other two were adoption forms--for Calum to adopt Samantha and for Michael to adopt Kotira.

Their shared office had business card mockups for Calum Hood-Clifford. The girls somehow obtained flower girl dress catalogues, which Sam thoroughly enjoyed and Kotira mostly shredded.

Michael hated that Calum knew him so well. They’d been as good as engaged since Calum had brought up the pact, and they both knew that. Michael’s objections had been valid, but they were objections that could and would be addressed.

Michael collapsed onto one of the plush chairs in the living room. He’d just gotten Sam down for her nap, Calum and Kotira out for some daddy-daughter bonding time. The house was quiet without two pairs of little feet running around, or Calum singing loudly and intentionally off-key in the kitchen.

He had a lot of time to think, now that they were off tour. He wasn’t sure if he liked it.

Calum’s proposal had surprised him, but thinking back, it was far less surprising than it could have been. Their pact was fifteen years old, and they had been serious at the time--Michael even remembered most of it.

_Calum leaned across Michael’s bed to snag the pizza receipt._

_“Here, let’s write it down,” he said. They’d been shooting the shit the night before they left for London, the first time, and the conversation had turned to their love lives--or their lack thereof. Calum had made a suggestion that Michael had surprisingly taken seriously: that if they were unmarried at thirty, they’d marry each other. “Make it official and everything.”_

_Thirty years old was fifteen years down the line, twice their lives over. A lot could happen in fifteen years, so Michael had no problem saying “sure. Write it out and I’ll sign it.”_

_Calum did so, snorting. “Now we’ve got incentive to find girls to marry us.”_

_“Or boys,” Michael said, sticking his tongue out. He didn’t really mean it, except for in the ways that he did. “And really, only one of us has to get married. The other can be alone forever.” He snatched up the receipt and signed it wobbily. “I’m gonna be the best husband.”_

_“I’ll be better,” Calum said, and shrieked as Michael tackled him to the floor._

What followed after wasn’t hard to piece together.

Later that day, Calum would rescue the receipt from Michael’s bedroom floor. He’d take it home and tuck it into his Norwest scrapbook, the one that his mum had put together and filled with photos of Calum and Michael together over the years. When the band moved to LA, the scrapbook came with him, a precious kilo of his baggage weight but something Calum was unwilling to leave behind.

The receipt would stay tucked into that scrapbook for almost a decade and a half, until Calum found himself leafing through it the night after he learned of Kotira’s existence. The receipt had floated out, and the idea of marriage must have started to grow again.

Michael was still devastated, still had Samantha to worry about and her adoption papers to finalize.

But Calum had the whisper of an idea, the faintest hint of a potential future. And for then, until he could bring it up to Michael, that whisper would be enough.

“Michael, you changed the access code, you dick!” Luke cried, coming in from the garage.

“No, Calum did,” Michael said absently, staring at the marriage application. “It’s Kotira’s birthday.”

“Yeah, I figured, since I, y’know, _got into the house_. So the fuck is going on with you two? You’ve just vanished from everything since tour ended.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “You might be forever young, but Calum and I are actually pretty content to stay in these days.”

“All three of you have gotten boring. Ashton blew me off last night because he was going to brunch with his friends,” Luke grumbled, but brightened quickly. “How’re the girls?”

“Loud. Excitable. Missing their uncles.”

“We’re having a band dinner tomorrow night,” Luke declared, and claimed a chair at the table. “No excuses. Hey, what’s that?”

“A marriage application,” Michael said absently, and Luke choked.

“You’re getting married?” he demanded, once he could breathe again. “To _who_?”

“Calum, probably.” Michael spun the papers around to face Luke. “Still trying to decide if I should sign them or not.”

There was a long silence. “Oh, shit, do you want my opinion?” Luke asked finally.

“Only if you have one.”

“You could marry worse people.” Luke paused. “I mean. I don’t know if you’ll have the big sweeping love story again, not after--”

“Don’t say his name,” Michael cut in, voiced ragged. “I just, we don't need to say his name, okay?”

Luke met Michael’s gaze, blue eyes all sad and knowing and _dumb_. “Okay, Mikey,” he replied softly. “But I mean, I don’t think you’ll have the grandest love story of all time with Calum. But you’d both--well, you’re practically married already. Have been for...awhile, I guess.”

“Sam never met her dad,” Michael said quietly. “I think she assumes Calum is her dad.”

“And would that be so bad?” Luke asked. “Kotira’s mum doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore. Why couldn’t you be Kotira’s parent too?”

“Why do I have to marry him to do that?”

Luke considered that. “You don’t. But I think you’d be happier if you did.” He stood and ruffled a hand through Michael’s hair. “I’ll come back tomorrow. I don’t think you’re really in a good mood to help me plan Feldy’s surprise party.”

When Calum got home, Michael was still staring at the forms.

“Romance me,” Michael said bluntly, as Calum hung up Kotira’s bag by the door. “Convince me that this is a good idea.”

Calum broke out into a wide grin. “I’m gonna romance you so hard.”

“So hard!” Kotira echoed, making their little family unit break into laughter.

\--

On their first date, they went to pick out engagement rings. Calum drove, but he left his hand resting on Michael’s knee, except for when he had to switch out of drive into reverse or park. God bless automatic cars, honestly.

“Don’t pick out anything too stupid,” Michael warned, when they were holding hands and walking through the mall to a jewelry store.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Calum said, but his shiteating grin said otherwise.

“And no matching rings.”

“Aww, but--”

“No matching rings.”

They were stopped a couple of times by fans, but by now most fans were kind enough to leave them mostly alone, other than for a few pictures. It took them twenty minutes to traverse the mall to get to their destination. Once they were there, Michael almost decided he’d rather stay outside with a whole mob of rabid fans straight out of a time machine from their first big tour, but Calum pulled him into the shop.

“Ring shopping for a fiancee?” the saleswoman asked.

“Absolutely. We’re getting married,” Calum said cheekily. The saleswoman paused, then forged forward.

“Of course! Would you like to shop together or separately?”

“Uh, together,” Michael said, clinging tightly to Calum’s hand. “If I’m going to have to see it on him for the rest of our lives, I’m not letting him make a shitty decision.”

“Well, men’s rings are over here. How long have you two been together?”

“Oh, almost ten years,” Calum said, looping his arm around Michael’s waist. “We have two daughters, we thought it was time.” He kept talking, spinning this romantic half-truth. Michael threw in little details, slowly realizing most of it was true. Some of the shinier lies he embellished, having forgotten how fun it was to riff off of Calum. Eventually, Calum convinced the saleswoman to let them browse on their own.

“Did you have to tell her that story?”

“Well, it’s mostly true, isn’t it?”

“I mean--”

“Come on. Look at rings with me, yeah?”

Michael sighed, then let himself be drawn in by Calum’s arm around his waist. He rested his head on Calum’s shoulder as they looked at set of rings after set of rings.

“Cal, I don’t like any of these--can we go, please?”

“Hang on.” Calum pointed to a pair of rings towards the back corner. They weren’t flashy and didn’t have stones, which was probably why they were in the back. One was a titanium cable ring, and the other a hammered tungsten ring. “How about those?”

Michael was already visualizing the feel of the cable ring on his left ring finger. “Oh, absolutely.”

Calum turned to flag down the saleswoman.

\--

Michael’s engagement ring felt heavier than it actually was. The ring itself was light, but Michael couldn’t help but _notice_ it.

He’d worn a ring before, a commitment ring that hadn’t weighed as much as this one did. Or maybe it had, and Michael had just forgotten. It hadn’t been that long ago that his husband had died. But in other ways, it was forever ago.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Calum murmured, setting their beers on the table. He pulled a little red number card from his pocket and tucked it into the number stand to identify their table. Michael’s eyes were drawn to the ring around Calum’s finger, and how it looked like it had always been there.

“We’re at a Doner place, we’re newly engaged, our kids don’t even know yet, and things are starting to hit me.”

“Breathe, Mike,” Calum said soothingly, and pushed one of the bottles at Michael. “Come on, this is a date. This is our first date. Get excited!”

“Did this a bit backwards, didn’t we? Got engaged before our first date?”

“I mean, if you want to be technical, our first date was when we were seventeen, right?” Calum shrugged. “So we broke up when we were nineteen. Whatever. We’ve kind of been together since last tour. Like, in practice, or whatever.”

Michael felt himself smile. “You’re not wrong. Luke wasn’t surprised when he saw the marriage application on the kitchen table.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t run screaming at the sight of it.”

“Yeah, well.” Michael took a sip of beer. He loved this restaurant, and their mighty midget kitchen outside. They had the best tzatziki sauce here, and they refused to sell anything but imported German beer, which honestly made the kitschy decor worth it. “Hey, Hood?”

“Mm?”

“When I told you to seduce me, I wasn’t expecting the same German place we go to every Tuesday.”

“You _love_ this place,” Calum said, pointing at Michael and raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “Like, you’d eat every meal here if you could. I know that for a _fact_. You would have hated if I’d made you wear a suit and go to a fancy French place, or whatever, and Mexican food gives you the shits, so those were out. Going to the movies seemed like a shitty outing--come on, we’re not teenagers anymore, don’t you roll your eyes--and I thought biking in the park would make you flop over in disappointment. You don’t want stunning, fancy dates. You want a regular date every Tuesday night and to dip your fries in yogurt, and you want to get drunk enough that we need an Uber home, and maybe at the end of it you’ll say you want a blowjob but mostly you just want to pass out and bitch about your hangover in the morning.”

Michael gaped a little.

“I know you, Michael Clifford,” Calum said, matter-of-fact. “This is 100% your dream date.”

“Jesus. What’s your evidence for that?”

“I know you.”

“So, if I don’t want sex at the end of this date, when do I want sex, then?”

Calum took a sip of beer and thought. “Well, you like morning sex but you’re too lazy to actually contribute. You want it when you’ve had a long, good day, and you feel like you need a laugh. So--whenever the mood strikes, pretty much, and when it does you’re a little shit about it until you get what you want, because you’ll never outright ask for it. Minx.”

Michael thought, and realized Calum was right. “We haven’t fucked in like, eight years. How do you _know_ that?”

“I know _you_.” Calum grinned. “Now, you do me. What’s my ideal date?”

While Michael thought, the waiter dropped off their meals and took the little number card from the stand. Calum tore into his Doner while Michael kept thinking.

“I guess--your perfect date is learning something new. Exploring somewhere. I like regularity and staying in. You like dates where you’re in a foreign city, with someone new, doing something you can’t do all the time. But you don’t mind doing something laid back, you just really like adventures. And--before you ask, you like to be spontaneous.”

“Got it in one.” Calum hooked his foot around Michael’s ankle under the table. “For the record--I like this too.”

“Regretting proposing yet?”

“God no. If I’ve got to pick a partner for the rest of my life, who better than you?”

\--

They told people as they saw them; there were never official cards sent out, or big posts on social media. If they saw people regularly, they told them. If they didn’t see them regularly, or make an effort to stay in contact, it was something those people would find out eventually.

Michael knew Calum was doing it more for him than for himself. Michael had been married before, had done the big celebration, but Calum hadn’t, and he was showing remarkable restraint.

Their parents they told separately, in video calls at the same time. Michael broke the news to his mum, stammering all the way. According to Calum, it largely went the same. Ashton and Luke had seen this coming for awhile, so telling them was almost nothing. Everyone else, it just got dropped into conversation, and since those people knew Michael, the response was a quiet congratulations rather than an exuberant one.

In the end, it happened that the only two people they hadn’t told were their daughters. The wedding was set for a few months out, and the girls’ grandparents would be taking turns with them for a couple of weeks while Michael and Calum honeymooned. Kotira was more obsessed with the idea of a cat, and Sam too busy finding new mud puddles in their backyard to wade in for either of them to care about any kind of fuss in the house. Besides, the two of them were young enough that they didn’t necessarily remember any other kind of life than being on tour or living together in the Cliffords’ house.

So they told them over dinner.

“Sam, Kotira? Daddy Michael and I have something to tell you.”

Kotira looked up at them but kept mashing at her potatoes. Sam took the opportunity to sneak a brussel sprout into the bread basket. Calum put it back on her plate.

“We’re getting married, okay? So Sam, Daddy Michael will also be your daddy. And Kotira, I’ll also be your daddy, not just Sam’s.”

“Okay,” said Kotira.

“Do I have to eat my brussel sprouts?” whined Samantha, and that was that.

\--

“Ashton, am I a shitty person?”

“Michael?”

“Like--he’s only been dead a couple of years, and I’m marrying my best friend. Like--that’s betraying him, right?”

“Jesus. Let me go into the living room so I don’t wake B, okay?” Michael could hear bedding rustling on the other end of the line. “I need coffee to deal with this crisis.”

There was a minute of quiet, while Ashton started up the coffeemaker and got settled.

“So, start from the beginning, Mike?”

“Am I a bad person for marrying Calum?”

Ashton’s sigh rattled the earpiece. “Are you a bad person for wanting to be happy again, babe? Does it make you a bad person for seeking comfort in familiarity? I don't think so. I think you want to blame all of it on yourself because there's a piece of you that will always mourn him.”

“I don’t--I don’t know. I loved--I loved him, and he died, and I still can’t say his name, and now I’m marrying Calum. Am I--am I betraying him?”

“Calum wouldn't have asked if he didn't think you could handle it. You're a strong person, Mike. You got the shit end of the stick, you lived through it, and now you have survivor’s guilt. There’s nothing wrong with needing to feel loved again.”

Michael picked at his nails, sitting on the edge of the couch. “That's the problem, Ash,” he said, voice wavering a little bit. “I don't think I've ever _not_ felt loved by Calum. Even after our breakup, even after we-”

“Mike. This is you making excuses. If you overthink this, you'll talk yourself out of a chance at being a real person again.” Ashton’s voice was stern, but not totally unkind. “Calum’s always been there for you, he'll always be there for you. Even if you go home and tell him that you'll never marry him, he will smile and give you the world anyways. Do _not_ give that up, Michael. You need him too much.”

And, there were Michael’s dumb emotional tears.

“Oh my god, are you crying? Mike--”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Oh, nope, I’m not fine, I’m crying.”

Ashton gentled his voice. “Hey. I think what you need to think about is would--if the situation had been reversed, if you’d died and he’d been Sam’s only daddy, would have have wanted him to find love again? Even if it meant he remarried?”

“I want to be selfish and say no, but--yeah. I would have wanted him to find someone.”

“Do you think he’d have wanted the same thing?”

“I’m--yeah. I guess.”

“So you happened to rekindle an old relationship. That’s what you need right now, Mike. And you’re what Calum needs too, yeah?”

“Michael, you okay?” Calum’s voice came from the doorframe. He was shirtless, wearing his plaid pajama pants slung low on his hips. “You weren’t in bed when I checked.”

“Why were you checking?” Michael asked, sounding defensive even to his own ears.

“Your door was open and I thought I heard Sam or Kotira going for a midnight wander. Wasn’t expecting you to be up and about, but I thought I should check on you too. Your nightmares haven’t been acting up again, have they?”

“No, they, uh. They haven’t. Thanks for worrying, though.”

“So what’s got you up so late?” Calum crossed the room, then saw the phone tucked into Michael’s shoulder. “Oh--uh. I’ll let you get back to your conversation?”

“It’s just Ash. He was...he was talking me through some cold feet.”

“Oh. I’ll just--I’ll go now.”

“No, don’t. I was just finishing up. Um, can I--can I sleep with you tonight?”

Calum smiled. “Anytime, Mikey. In fact--I’d rather that’s where you were.”

\--

Michael and Calum got married on the beach in Florida. There were more logistics involved than Michael really wanted to think about considering the fact that they weren’t American citizens and resided in LA for work, not any part of Florida.

But Calum had his heart set on Florida, and who was Michael to say no to that? Besides, Michael had family in Florida-- _they_ had family in Florida now, they were officially family now, even if they’d been family in all the ways that counted for years and years by now.

By getting married across the country from most of their friends and across the world from most of their family, it kept the wedding small. Their parents came, and Calum’s sister; Luke and Ashton were their best men, of course, and their daughters. Michael had done the whole big wedding before and had no desire to repeat the experience. Neither did Calum, even though he’d never had a big wedding for himself.

All that really mattered, though, was their chosen officiant asking Michael “do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” and Michael replying with two short, beautiful words.

“I do.”

Calum echoed the words moments after, and let Michael dip him in a kiss. They didn’t stop kissing until two tiny bodies collided with their legs. Calum scooped Sam up, and Michael picked Kotira up.

Ashton’s camera flashed, and Calum knew he had another picture for the scrapbook.

 

**Author's Note:**

> tell me what you think!! and come talk to me on tumblr at satellitesandfallingstars. :D :D


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